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Brazil started off their Olympic 2021 campaign in impressive fashion against Germany in this morning’s game in Tokyo — a rematch of the 2016 Olympic final where the Brazilians won the gold medal after winning a penalty shootout.
Today’s game started with only one team truly in it. Germany, all over the place defensively, especially in transition, struggled picking up Brazilian’s runners. Within 30 minutes, Richarlison had a hat-trick, and in the 45th minute, Brazilian striker Matheus Cunha missed a penalty that would’ve made it 4 - 0.
With the game being open and Germany chasing the game, it would’ve been a good pressure-off situation for Real Madrid’s Reinier Jesus to come off the bench.
But while Reinier did get minutes — coming on in the 74th minute for Richarlison — the pace of the game slowed down, and Reinier didn’t have much of the ball to influence the game. Germany played more physical in the second half, went down to 10 men, and even pulled two goals back to make it 3 - 2 before Paulinho scored a late goal in the 94th minute to put the game to bed.
Brazil’s next game will be against Ivory Coast on Sunday. Reports on Takefusa Kubo, Dani Ceballos, Marco Asensio, and Jesus Vallejo coming on our site shortly.